“Shit.” He scrubbed his hands down his face, through his beard before dropping them to his hips and stepping back. “Give me a minute, but then you’re talking. Both of you.”
He stormed out of my entryway, headed toward where I kept my coffee. He’d been in my house enough since he’d been traded to Las Vegas, so I left him to it and turned to Rachel.
“That goes for you, too. You don’t get to come into my house and disrespect Gabby or me like you just did. None of this is about Garrett, and if you talk to your daughter like that again while I’m here, I’m going to be the one seeing you out.”
I’d always respected Rachel. She’d always come across as a woman much like my own mother who was level-headed, proud of her boy for making it to the NHL. Until she spoke to Gabby the way she did at dinner last night, I never could have imagined that would have been the first thing she said.
“You don’t get it, Joey,” she said, sighing. “This is Gabby. This is what she does. Acts first, thinks last…”
“Enough.” I squeezed Gabby’s hand and pulled her close to me. “That’s enough, Rachel, and I mean it. You want answers to your questions, you’ll shut your mouth and listen or you’ll be on the front porch and you won’t be hearing a damn thing.”
“Joey,” Gabby whispered, pressing more tightly into my side. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay.” I tried to loosen my features, but knew I was scowling at her. “I got three brothers. Mom and Dad, they never pitted us against us like she’s doing to you. She might love you, she might want the best for you, but constantly talking to you like you’re fucking everything up and blaming you for all of it is shit and shouldn’t happen, and I’m not going to stand here listening to it. Not anymore.”
I slid my gaze to Rachel, wearing an expression similar to the one Garrett sported when he entered. “You get me?”
She glanced at Gabby. Back to me. With angry eyes and a pinched face, she huffed. “You’ll see. You might not like what I’m saying, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong either.”
With that, she took off in the direction Garrett had headed, leaving Lizzie gawking at both of us.
“So… you’re married.” She grinned and then rolled her lips together like she was fighting a laugh. “That’s exciting.”
7
Gabby
In my wildest imaginations, I couldn’t have predicted the whirlwind of this morning would have ended up with Joey Taylor, of all people, stepping in between my mother and me as she began to remind me how disappointed she was in my decisions.
As she opened her mouth, I’d braced for the worst, but she’d barely gotten anything out before Joey was there, defending me and protecting me. Never, not once in my life, had I ever had that. Sure, there was Garrett, who hated it when Mom pulled this crap, but like this morning, all he did was admonish her with a word.
He would hug me later, apologize on her behalf, remind me she loved me, she just didn’t understand me. For a woman who solved puzzles and crime for a living, she was completely exasperated by that fact.
But even then, he’d never stepped up and said Don’t.
For a moment, the briefest of them, I’d imagined a lifetime of being with Joey, believing I’d always have someone at my back in this way. It was fleeting, the bubble bursting almost as quickly as it formed, but now I wanted that back. I wanted to reach for it and hold it to me and believe this completely ludicrous plan of Joey’s would work.
We’d feign a mad crush, a whirlwind romance we kept in secret, although who would believe that considering I’d barely left Garrett and Lizzie’s on my own since I’d been in town? Maybe, for the first time in my life, I’d shut my mom up faster than Joey had done.
Leave it to Lizzie to know exactly how to lighten the mood.
I grinned, it shook and trembled, and I still clung to Joey like a suction cup, but I was smiling, shaking my head at her. “It appears that way,” I said.
Her smile was bright enough to light up a room on a normal day. Today, it was cautious even as she stepped toward me with her arms outstretched.
I released Joey’s hand, missed his warmth immediately and pulled her in for a hug.
“Your mom. She loves you but I doubt even Garrett will let that slide.”
“We’ll see,” I muttered into the crook of her shoulder. She was growing every day and I had to fold myself over her stomach to hug her.
“You really got hitched?”
I stepped back, showed her the ring. “Yeah.”
“Holy shit,” she gasped. One hand covered her mouth and the other yanked my hand closer to her. “This is fucking huge!”
“That’s what they all say,” Joey teased.
“Shut up.” She laughed, and I joined him, bumping my shoulder into his as he stepped up to me and settled his hand on my lower back.
“It’s gorgeous,” she said, still gaping at him, fingers shaking like she was afraid to touch it. I understood. I was terrified of the weight of the thing alone, much less playing with it. I couldn’t even take it off. What if I lost it? This had to be more than the average person spent on a car.
Holy hell. I was wearing a Mercedes. A giggle worked its way up and I covered my mouth before it fell free. With my mom and Garrett in the other room, probably making coffee and talking in hushed tones about me so I didn’t hear them, I allowed myself the moment of happiness as Lizzie smiled up at me, eyes shining but wary.
“You’re happy? This is good?”
“It will be,” Joey proclaimed, and it was just that. A promise. A vow, or at least a wish everything would work out.
I looked up at him, so much taller than me. The top of my head barely brushed the top of his shoulder but that was okay. It gave me a great view of that sexy indent at the base of his neck, his Adam’s apple as he swallowed. He grinned down at me and I swayed on my feet.
The dimple. Holy crap. I’d forgotten about that dimple of his but there it was, on full display, digging into his cheek so perfectly I wanted to run my fingertip over it and then press my lips to his full ones.
“Yeah.” Lizzie cleared her throat and stepped back, dropping my hand like the ring scalded her. “I’m just… going to give that look a moment of privacy.”
I frowned at her, caught her smirk and the circle she made with her finger pointed in our direction before she waddled out of the room. Pretty sure her stomach disappeared three seconds before the rest of her did she was getting so big.
“So,” Joey said, still holding me, still grinning down at me and making me stupid with that dimple. “I’m thinking we should call my family, get this over with all together.”
Flashbacks of his dad calling refs donkeys and dick sucking zebras during calls he didn’t agree with flashed into my brain and I flinched.
“Too much?” Joey chuckled.
“Um. Yes. But I don’t think it could get much worse.”
“Right.” His smile flatlined and he grabbed his phone from his pocket. He grimaced, looking at his text strings before sliding his dark eyes to me. “Looks like they heard and are on their way anyway.”